…; collection Jan Hendrik van Heemskerk, Heer van Achttienhoven (1698-1730, The Hague); his widow Anna Petronella van Heemskerk, née Schuylenburch (1693-1766); her sale, The Hague (S. Rietmulder), 29 March 1770 sqq., no. 100 (‘SNYDERS. (F) Een stil leeven. P. Hoog 22, breed 32 duim [57.5 x 83.7 cm] Op een Tafel bedekt met een rood kleed, ziet man eenig dood Wild, als een Haas, Patrys, Snippen, Vinken enz. waarby een vergulde Schaal op een Voet, en daarin diverse fruiten. Wyders op de tafel nog twee Glazen en een Schenkkan’), fl. 140, to Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague;¹¹Copy RKD. his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam, (‘François Snyders. Représentant toute sorte de gibier mort, étalé sur un table, avec un vase rempli de fruits, bois, h. 21½ l. 33½ [56.2 x 87.6 cm]’);²²‘Catalogue Raisonné d’une Collection de Tableaux appartenant à Monsieur A.L. Gevers, Page de Leurs Majestés le Roi et la Reine de Hollande’, s.l. 1808, transcribed in E.W. Moes and E. van Biema, De Nationale Konst-Gallery en Het Koninklijk Museum, Amsterdam 1909, pp. 145-51, esp. p. 150, no. 107. from whom, fl. 100,000, with 136 other paintings en bloc (known as the ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), to the museum, by decree of Lodewijk Napoleon King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809;³³T.L.J. Verroen, ‘‘Een verstandig ryk Man’: de achttiende-eeuwse verzamelaar Adriaan Leonard Van Heteren’, in C. Scheffer (ed.) et al., Achttiende-eeuwse kunst in de Nederlanden, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 4 (1985), pp. 17-61, esp. p. 17, notes 2, 3. on loan to the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 2002-10

Object number: SK-A-378

The support of this painting consists of a single plank, from an oak tree grown in the German/Netherlandish area, which would have been ready for use from as early as 1585, but more plausibly, some ten years later. The reverse is coated with a ground, a cross-section of which shows a white layer probably of chalk beneath a transparent brown layer in which black and red particles of pigment have been added. There is a bevel on all sides, although it is incomplete at the bottom edge where there is a small loss to it. The ground is a white colour, the imprimatura layer is grey; a cross-section shows two layers: one solid white, probably of chalk mixture, beneath a grey mixture of white pigment together with finely mixed carbon black. The support is painted up to the edges. The still-life elements at the centre and to the left were reserved against the cloth; the base of the tazza and enamelled pitcher were not reserved, although the fruits were.

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this signed work. The wine glass and goblet are less assured in handling and may be additions, but old, for they are mentioned in the description given in the 1770 sale catalogue. The support is of a single piece of oak timber from a tree grown in the German/Netherlandish region, which would have been ready for use in 1585 and more plausibly from a decade later.

The still life chiefly consists in a wine glass, a goblet and an enamelled pitcher, a silver-gilt tazza and a Kraak porcelain bowl; a dead hare and game birds; a bunch of asparagus, an artichoke head, two lemons and strawberries.

The same components of game, birds, fruit and vegetables, with the addition of a lobster, appear in a still life by Snijders which has been dated 1605-10.¹⁰¹⁰S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, p. 81, fig. 92. Very similar but with a more compact composition is a work dated 1613¹¹¹¹S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, p. 80, fig. 91. and a signed work at Kassel.¹²¹²S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, p. 330, fig. 436; B. Schnackenburg, Gesamtkatalog Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Kassel, 2 vols., Kassel 1996, p. 284, no. GK116a. But shadows from the raking light are hardly in evidence in the Rijksmuseum picture and for this reason Robels’s dating of circa 1616 is acceptable. Because the tonality of Snijders’s still lifes lightened as his career advanced,¹³¹³S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, p. 80. an even later date might be considered. The shadows are still quite marked in the Boston picture of 1616,¹⁴¹⁴ S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, p. 83, fig. 97. where the same tazza beside an enamelled pitcher also occurs.

As in contemporary flower still lifes, the vegetables and fruit shown here ripened at different times of the year. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) commenting to the English exile and connoisseur Tobie Matthew on Snijders’s art at this time, singled out his ability to depict dead birds. Matthew reported Rubens as saying: ‘The talent of Snyders, is to represent beasts but especiallie Birds altogether dead, and wholly without anie action’.¹⁵¹⁵C. Ruelens and M. Rooses (eds.), Correspondance de Rubens et documents epistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, 6 vols., Antwerp 1887-1909, II, p. 99, letter from Matthew to Sir Dudley Carleton, 25 February 1617. The context of Rubens’s remarks led him to be unwittingly restrictive, for the artist shows here a talent if not mastery in the execution of fruit and vegetables as well. The methodically arranged components point to his having executed a preparatory drawing, of which however there would appear to be no trace.¹⁶¹⁶S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, pp. 59-60.

Koslow has shown that this type of still life may have been inspired, or at least validated, by examples from classical antiquity as described by the elder Philostratus in the Imagines popularized by Blaise de Vigenère’s translation into French.¹⁷¹⁷S. Koslow, Frans Snyders: The Noble Estate. Seventeenth-Century Still-Life and Animal Painting in the Southern Netherlands, Antwerp 1995, pp. 45ff. The Xenia as there described in no. 31 of book I were rendered by de Vigenère into French as Presens Rustiques.¹⁸¹⁸Philostrate les images ou tableaux de platte-peinture traduction et commentaire de Blaise de Vigenère, 1578, ed. and translated by F. Graziani, 2 vols., Paris 1995, no. 31, pp. 455-59.

The silver-gilt tazza depicted here was a favourite of Snijders,¹⁹¹⁹See H. Robels, Frans Snyders, Stilleben- und Tiermaler, 1579-1657, Munich 1989, no. 110 of 1613, and following nos. and also appears on some table tops decorated by Jan Brueghel I (1568-1625) about 1615.²⁰²⁰In The Month of Winter, executed in collaboration with Hendrik van Balen, of 1616, in the Staatsgalerie Neuburg an der Donau; B. Werche, Hendrick van Balen (1575-1632). Ein Antwerpener Kabinettbildmaler der Rubenszeit, 2 vols., Turnhout 2004, I, no. A176; and The Allegory of Taste, executed in collaboration with Rubens, of 1618, in Madrid (Museo Nacional del Prado); M. Díaz Padrón, Museo del Prado: Catálogo de pinturas, 1: Escuela flamenca siglo XVII, 2 vols., Madrid 1975, I, no. 1397.

Gregory Martin, 2022

H. Robels, Frans Snyders, Stilleben- und Tiermaler, 1579-1657, Munich 1989, no. 121

1809, p. 66, no. 284; 1864, p. 143, no. 304; 1872, p. 149, no. 312; 1880, p. 419, no. 489 (as life size); 1903, p. 248, no. 2208; 1934, p. 264, no. 2208; 1976, p. 516, no. A 378

G. Martin, 2022, 'Frans Snijders, Still Life with Dead Game, Fruit and Vegetables, c. 1616 - c. 1620', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200107990